It is known practice for the tire of a private car or of a heavy goods vehicle to be equipped with a pressure sensor so as to determine the pressure within this tire without having to connect a pressure sensor to the corresponding valve. Such sensors are found on vehicles equipped with tire-pressure monitoring systems. An indication of the pressure is then given to the driver of the vehicle by a display on the instrument panel. Several tire pressure monitoring systems of this style exist and are known to those skilled in the art.
A tire is generally mounted airtightly on a rim and a valve passes through the rim to place the volume delimited by the tire and the rim in communication with the outside. The valve allows air under pressure to be introduced in order to inflate the tire or, alternatively, and more rarely, to allow air to escape from this tire. In tire pressure monitoring systems, the pressure sensor is generally mounted at the valve on the inside of the tire.
In the known systems, the valve used is a special-purpose valve to which a pressure sensor is fitted. Often, the pressure sensor is fixed irreversibly to the valve. Mounting a pressure sensor therefore makes the valve more expensive and, in most cases, when the valve has to be changed, so does at least part of the sensor.
Furthermore, the design of the pressure sensor supports means that mounting these entails a relatively high number of parts and is therefore relatively complicated. In addition, the current supports are designed for entirely metal valves which cost more than the valves more commonly used which are made of rubber (with a metal insert).